By Jorge Vazquez
Nov 28, 2023, 08:16 AM EST
Self-checkout checkouts offer great advantages and many customers prefer them over traditional checkouts. However, for other buyers they become annoying due to the flaws they can present and that ultimately end up requiring the support of a person from the store.
BestLife reports that at Home Depot several users have complained that the retailer has the worst self-checkout systems.
These devices allow us to enter and exit the store quickly and avoid contact with people at the cash register, but when they fail they can become a real annoyance, because when waiting for a manager’s attention the lines become too long listening repeatedly. an engraved message that says: “Please place your item in the bag.”
A Home Depot customer shared a video of a bad experience, captioning it “When self-checkout yells at you.” In the TikTok post, user Angela Resendes (@angelaresendes) shared the problem that was created by accidentally scanning a free wood sample, with the machine repeating: “Customer needs help with self-checkout,” until a worker appeared to solve the problem.
Other customers agreed in the comments of the video, which gained thousands of likes after its publication. “Home Depot has the worst self-checkout,” one user commented. “Why does the volume have to be so high?” commented another, to which @angelaresendes replied: “That’s what I was saying; “I bet the people in the parking lot could hear it.”
Other commenters noted that failures can be embarrassing when self-checkout equipment does not function properly. One consumer commented that the alarm went off for about 7 minutes and made him feel mortified, like he was stealing.
The problem is not exclusive to Home Depot, in other stores, such as ShopRite and Walmart, smaller things and vegetables can also cause problems for customers, because if they do not correctly identify a seedless lemon, the machine will stop until have a clerk approve that it is the correct item.
One associate noted that the scale can also easily go out of calibration due to the small items it needs to check: “The weight detection was so fine-tuned that a feather, a couple of leaves, an errant screw, or the wind blowing in a door would set it off.” .
The machines are also said to prove a challenge for the blind and people in wheelchairs who sometimes cannot reach the screens.
One customer mentioned that she was forced to use self-checkout because there were no cashier lines open and that she ended up in “pretty excruciating pain, she was exhausted,” which caused her to go home to take painkillers and go to bed to recover. .
However, despite the complaints, most agree that self-checkouts are better than the alternative of being served by a person at the traditional checkout.
A 2021 survey of 1,000 shoppers found that 85% believe automated machines are typically faster than cashier lines and that 60% of people prefer them. This is despite 67% of respondents in the same survey saying that a kiosk had failed while they were using it.
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